Daniel Kurtzman offers 10 reasons why Sarah Palin decided to resign: "4. Her daughter Bristol is actually having Alex Rodriguez's baby. ... 1. She didn't resign at all. It was an elaborate hoax pulled off by Tina Fey."
ANCHORAGE (The Borowitz Report) -- Moments after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced her resignation from office, comedians from coast to coast held candlelight vigils to mourn what one comic called "a devastating loss."
"To say that we are heartbroken is a massive understatement," said Shecky Sheinbaum, a regular headliner at Cincinnati's Laugh Hut. "I feel like the chicken crossing the road has been run over by a truck before it gets to the other side."
Oh somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout,
But there's no joy in Charleston-mighty Sanford has struck out.
Colbert's review of The Clinton Curse after the flip.
(Bumped (yet again). Happy Independence Day. - promoted by David)
Read it and weep. Seriously. Happy 231st 232nd 233rd, America. An image of the original document is in the extended.
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred. to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
John Hancock
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Sarah Palin has announced that she is resigning as the Governor of Alaska.
She didn't say why she decided to step down, but the surprise announcement stirred speculation that she would focus on a bid for the 2012 Republican nomination for president.
The former Republican vice presidential candidate made the announcement from her home in suburban Wasilla on Friday morning. She said she would step down July 26.
This is a great move - if she stayed Governor, she'd have a bunch of experience by 2012, and that would make her all insidery and stuff. Now she can tour the country with likely running mate Joe the Plumber and talk about Bill Ayers. You betcha!
UPDATE: Oh my God. I just heard a snippet of her press conference on NPR. She's babbling almost as incoherently as she did in the Katie Couric interview. WTF??
(MassVote lacks the organizational capacity to sponsor a debate? That's, well, silly. Mr. Fouhy is not doing the mayor any favors with lines like that. - promoted by David)
In a story that ran in today's Boston Herald, Mayor Menino's campaign trashed a non-profit organization whose sole purpose is to provide voters with the resources they need for civic engagement. The organization, MassVote, works to increase voter education and turnout amongst communities of color, youth, the disabled and in ethnic communities where language is a barrier. Since its creation in 1999, MassVote has helped empower thousands of Massachusetts voters.
As part of their civic outreach, MassVote has scheduled three mayoral forums in advance of this year's municipal elections - on September 3rd, September 17th, and October 17th, respectively. These forums will provide voters with the opportunity to engage with their elected officials and make an informed decision when heading to the ballot box. Three of the candidates - at large City Councilors Sam Yoon and Michael Flaherty, as well as Kevin McCrea, have already agreed to participate in the forums. Mayor Menino - however - refuses to participate.
It's astonishing that this was ever under serious consideration.
The [Washington] Post decided Thursday to cancel plans to charge lobbyists and trade groups $25,000 or more to sponsor private, off-the-record dinner parties at the home of its publisher, Katharine Weymouth, events that would have brought together lobbyists, business leaders, Post journalists and officials from the Obama administration and Congress.... A flier describing the events promised corporate sponsors conversation ("Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No.") at the Washington home of Ms. Weymouth. Sponsors were asked to pay $25,000 to attend an event, or underwrite a series of 11 for $250,000.
The July 21 event, focusing on health care reform, "guaranteed" a "collegial evening" with health industry advocates, Post journalists covering the field and administration officials involved with its policies.
At least WaPo had the good sense to cancel the thing when word leaked out.
Drop your ideas for awesome BMG fundraisers in the comments! ;-)
An interesting letter from an expatriate in Japan on a variety of topics. Goes to show the incredibly constrained range of alternatives that are typically presented as the entire spectrum of possibilities in Massachusetts. If the state reimbursed everyone's commute by the least expensive alternative, for example, I dare say transportation reform would take on a whole new meaning.
"There are many things here that make life difficult, but on the other hand, make life much easier, some planned, some dictated by circumstances and by accident. It seems very socialist. Makes it very difficult to compare Japan and the US.
There is national health care here. Due to a focus on disease prevention (they have started to take waist measurements and warn you if your waist is say more than 34 inches), not eating too much meat, getting enough vitamin D from sunlight and getting a little exercise because you have to walk 10 minutes to the train station, you can expect, on average, to be fully functional until about 75 and live into your 80s.
Almost everyone is reimbursed for commute to work, by least expensive route, say bus and train, even if you work in a convenience store.
From State House News Service's weekly email roundup*:
"We pulled back," Patrick said of the administration's 2007 retreat from a grassroots offensive against tax-resistant legislators, "and I'm sorry we did to tell you the truth, because it doesn't quite keep faith with the notion of democracy that citizen involvement would be … a deterrent to good policy. Now, we went back to this in the last few weeks with the reform agenda. And I think it was important, and I think it helped." Going to keep that up, Guv? "Sure. Oh yeah."
The new-old outside-in thing has definitely been better. In January 2007, Patrick locked himself in the office to study the budget -- to try to get on top of all the levers and buttons he could push. Didn't really address the press or the grassroots or the public -- just got right down to work. Admirable, really. But he's also supposed to have good staff that can do some of that for him, and give him bottom-line assessments and recommendations.
Anyway, if you don't have the figurehead of the governor out there driving the agenda, the agenda gets driven by someone else. And so we were left with Caddies and drapes. (Still immensely stupid that that still gets mentioned.) And while a good working relationship with the lege arguably produced decent results on their own merits (i.e. some good economic development work in '07-08), it didn't provide the wholesale cultural shakeup that people had hoped for when they voted for the outsider-as-governor.
Should I have said this years ago? Yup.
*(Are you not getting this? It's gold. Free gold.)
Driving Equality was unconstitutionally searched today.
We left Niland, CA in the afternoon and headed toward Los Angeles. On our way, there was a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint. We were not anywhere near the border, but still, every car traveling north on this road had to stop. We were asked our citizenship status and the contents of the van. I told the officer that we are American citizens and that we had film and camping equipment in the van. He asked me if he could look in the back of the van. I said no. He asked me why not. I told him that there was no reason for him to look in the back and that I had the right to refuse a search under the 4th Amendment. He asked me to pull the van over to the side.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" - Benjamin Franklin
Governor Deval L. Patrick announced today that Arthur Bernard -- currently a Senior Advisor to the Governor -- has been appointed Chief of Staff in the Governor's office. Bernard will replace Doug Rubin who is leaving state government to join the Governor's re-election campaign.
"Arthur has become one of my closest and most trusted advisors since joining the team last year," said Governor Patrick. "His experience, judgment and level-headedness have been enormous assets to me already and make him perfectly suited to help lead our ambitious agenda."
Note that Rubin is not heading back to the private sector just yet; instead, he is shifting over to the Gov's political operation in preparation for 2010.
Here's hoping both that Rubin continues his engagement here on BMG, and that Mr. Bernard will do so as well. Congrats to both.
Exhausted, confused and extremely frightened, Owen immediately ran to the safety of a giant tortoise when we released him in Haller Park. Mzee, our 130 year old tortoise, just happened to be nearby and he was very surprised by Owen's odd behavior cowering behind him as a baby hippo does to its mother. Mzee quickly came to terms with his new friend and even returned signs of affection. The unusual relationship between this baby hippo and the ancient tortoise amazed people the world over and has featured in most countries on television and in news papers.
What is the moral of this story for Massachusetts politics?
(What did happen at Deerfield? Poor, poor Howie. - promoted by Bob)
Howie Carr's bizarre on-air rants against Tom Finneran are disturbing.
What the Hell did Finneran ever do to him? Is Howie a self-hating Irish Catholic?
To say Howie has 'no class" is a not only a huge understatement but an insult to the classless.
Tom Finneran is not crooked. His friends and political enemies know this.
Sal DiMasi is most likely a crook. But guess what? Nobody is surprised. He has always been suspect. Same for Dianne Wilkerson.
Charley Flaherty? Not a crook. But way too openly close with lobbyists. They got him for not declaring on his taxes that he stayed at a friend/lobbyists cape house for week. In other words he was supposed to declare the value of a weeks stay at the cottage and pay an income tax on it. T
But Howies has gone Joe McCarthy on us. Is Howie correct when he cries that the State House has many hacks, phonies, frauds, and lay-abouts? Yes. Was Joe McCarthy correct when he accused the Federal Government of having Communist spies working within it? Yes. (he was proven right, sort of, after the fall of the Soviet Union)
Is Howie a fraud when he makes himself out as a common man with Somerville roots? Of course he is.
Does Howie have to fake laugh to get through his four hour show filled with borderlines calling in with phony stories about welfare mothers in front of them at the check-out counter? Of course he does.
Howie has lived a sheltered life. He's not as street smart as he thinks.
Joe McCarthy was a nut and went way out of his way to needlessly ruin many lives. Biographies of Joe suggest he was fighting a host of demons.
Did something happen at Deerfield Academy that made Howie so bitter? What, if anything, did those prep school richie riches do to the son of the guy mowing the lawn?
I'm not a psychologist so no diagnosis coming from me. But his rants on Finneran are becoming sad to listen to. They don't make sense. And even if they did Howie's creepy obsession with him should cause concern. Many Howie listeners have become familiar with Finneran through his morning show. They don't see/hear the same person that Howie has been portraying him to be.
(Thanks, Rep. Sciortino. Once again, we have the Governor and progressive members of the legislature fighting for transparency, and a committee that meets in secret -- sort of like Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force -- trying to keep information hidden, probably so that the money involved can be channeled to friends and relatives. Thanks for the heads up on "Attachment F - Transparency of Tax Credit Results:" another way to separate legislators who support government for the people from those who support ... something else. - promoted by Bob)
Dear Members of BMG Community:
The state budget recently passed by the legislature and signed by the Governor included a provision on tax credit transparency. This provision relates to specific credits, such as the historic preservation and film industry tax credits. These credits are refundable or transferrable, essentially acting as a state grant. But unlike typical grant programs, details about tax credits are considered private information. In other words, companies that receive tax credits are treated differently than companies that receive state grants. Does this make sense?
The transparency provision originally included in the budget mandated that those receiving these credits report certain information back to the state, including the identity of the corporation receiving the credit and the employment data to show how many jobs the credit allowed the company to create.
Unfortunately, the budget that eventually emerged from the conference committee changed the transparency provisions in such a way as to remove some critical reporting details. The omission of this important information - such as the identity of the company receiving the credit - will makes it virtually impossible for the state or the public to determine the effectiveness of these tax credit programs. At a time when the state is cutting virtually every state program, including core essential services and local aid, it is outrageous that the public cannot find out the true value of these tax credits, which are provided in the tens of millions of dollars to corporations.
If President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are sincere in their professions of enthusiasm for democracy and popular rule, they should join every other state in the region and withdraw our ambassador from Honduras. They should also suspend all U.S. military aid to the country until its democratically elected president is restored. NYT reports:
The United States, which provides millions of dollars in aid to Honduras and maintains a military base there, is the only country in the region that has not withdrawn its ambassador from Honduras. France and Spain have also recalled their ambassadors.
If they don't, and if the military junta that has illegally seized control of our regional neighbor Honduras stays in place, we can chalk this up as another example of "saying one thing but doing another" that seems to be becoming an all too frequent pattern by the Obama administration.
BMG raised the most money for Obama for America of any blog in the country except for DailyKos. It pains me to see such a wide gap opening between the candidate we supported and the president we got. I accept that six months is not four years, and the 2012 presidential campaign will not begin for another year or two, but the record to date, especially considering the large Democratic majorities the administration has to work with, raises questions.
Following its passage by the House, we've been hearing this week what a disappointment Waxman-Markey is. Yes, many folks told us so beforehand. It's a vast legislative kludge, with giveaways and little legislative bribes galore. Guilty, guilty, guilty.
From the standpoint of averting global climate catastrophe, there's one bottom line. When we have multiple bottom lines, things get murky. Do you want a bill that gets us to 450 -- no, it's more like 350 ppm of atmospheric CO2 by 2050 -- the standard for containing the global catastrophe -- or do you want a law that is pure and free of giveaways to special interests?
Here's a thought exercise: Rather than pass judgement on how our political system works vis-a-vis monied interests (which I do all the time), let's look at how things actually could be expected to work out. If we're moving away from dirty energy, someone loses, and it's not just executives of "dirty" industries. Coal miners lose; refinery workers lose; and so forth.
We're talking about remaking our energy economy in the US. Like it or not, there are real people who are dependent on the mining economy. Yes, Coal Is The Enemy Of The Human Race -- but it also is the economic subsistence of a good chunk of America. That can't just be wished away.
With this understanding, it is a reasonable cost of doing business to provide a buffer for people affected by those industries. "Clean coal" has gotten billions in giveaways. Countless other industries have extracted their pounds of flesh. It's unconscionable to me that someone would privilege their own interests over that of the billions of people who will be affected by climate catastrophe; but in the context of American politics, we shouldn't be surprised that they'd want a sweetener.
I don't know if the law's provisions represent an appropriate price to pay for their cooperation in reaching a 450ppm/2050 standard. But I'm not surprised that there is a price tag. And actually, the CBO says it's a pretty small burden on taxpayers.
So, dealmaking will continue to happen in the Senate. The specifics matter. But right now, the most important thing is to strengthen Waxman-Markey's standard of 450ppm of CO2 by 2050. (cf: 350.org.)
From now until the Senate takes up this legislation, a good dose of shrillness (thanks Paul Krugman, and others) is definitely in order. We should be on war footing -- is less at stake now than with, say, Afghanistan in 2002? I sure would appreciate our President and Congress getting involved in this issue with the kind of urgency that the issue demands -- right now.
(We had a good conversation with the Mayor. You can listen any time with the player posted below. - promoted by David)
Last in our series of conversations with the candidates for Boston's top job. Call in on (347) 539-5813 to listen to the program live or to ask a question, or post your question in the comments.
You can also listen live, or any time after the show, by clicking below.
(Sore loser Republican Norm Coleman, who initially advised Franken to withdraw his early demand for a recount, has finally withdrawn. Now we will see if President Obama is a progressive ... or something else. - promoted by Bob)
From NYT: "The Minnesota Supreme Court has ordered that Democrat Al Franken be certified as the winner of the state's long-running Senate race."
Somebody call the Republican waahmbulance. What a bunch of sore losers.
(Bumped, because I'm still liveblogging, damn it. - promoted by Bob)
More from the Personal Democracy Forum. Liveblog of discussion with Frank Rich (NYT), Karen Tumulty (Time), Dan Gillmor (ASU prof.), Scott Simon (NPR), Andrew Rasiej (PDF, moderator).
Moderator leads it off: "Is it all going to work out in the end? Will journalism survive." [Sigh, yes it will all work out, it's a fairy tale, after all. ... Good lord. - Bob]
Rich: People didn't imagine that anyone would pay for television, but they did. Tumulty: terrifying time. I hope I'm still around when they work it out. Gillmore: cites FireDogLake's "donate now" solicitations to fund investigative journalism. We need lots of experiments. Simon: people aren't going to be content with the old pompous model of the industry: "this is the news." Cites use of Twitter and other new media as tools to improve journalism. In the old days, they were limited to the personal knowledge of people in the newsroom. Now they can access the knowledge of millions to find source material. Rich: New media can create its own deceptions. Sanford's staff Tweeted for him while he was in South America. Some people initially saw this as evidence the Appalachian Trail story was valid. NYT reporter Roger Cohen provided a useful corrective to the "false dawn" of the Twitter Revolution story. [Excellent points - Bob]. Liveblog continues on the flip.
(Better and more useful discussion here than anything I've seen at the Personal Democracy Forum. - promoted by Bob)
As I noted earlier, there was very big news at the Supreme Court today -- and it wasn't the Ricci case. The biggest news was the non-decision in Citizens United v. FEC, in which the Court ordered reargument and briefing on whether two important campaign finance cases should be overruled. SCOTUSblog describes the issues presented as follows:
In the Austin [v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce] decision, the Court upheld the power of government to bar corporations from using funds from their own treasuries to support or oppose candidates for elected state offices. In the part of McConnell [v. FEC] that the Court will reconsider, the Justices upheld a provision of the 2002 campaign finance law that bars corporations and labor unions from using their treasury funds to pay for radio or TV ads, during election season, that refer to a candidate for Congress or the Presidency, and appear to urge a vote for or against such a candidate.
This case, in other words, is now about the opening of the floodgates of special interest money into the campaign system. Here's Rick Hasen, who has forgotten more about this stuff than most people will ever know:
If Republicans were wondering how their 2012 presidential candidate is going to compete against President Obama's $600 million fundraising juggernaut, the Supreme Court seems poised to provide an answer: unlimited corporate spending supporting the Republican candidate, or attacking Obama.... If after reargument in September, corporate limits fall - and limits on the money labor unions can spend on campaigns, with them - we may well look back on the 2008 election as a quaint time when the amounts spent on elections were relatively modest. Expect the floodgates to open, and the money to flow freely, as early as next year.
Hasen thinks, and I agree, that the Court is almost certain to overrule these cases (probably 5-4, or 5-3 if Sotomayor is not yet confirmed when the case is decided). We know for certain that Justices Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas will vote to overrule (they've said so in past cases). And it beggars belief to think that Roberts and Alito won't go along, given the opportunity -- Hasen reports that Alito has publicly expressed discontent with the current campaign finance cases, but has been unwilling to overrule past precedent until the issue was squarely presented and briefed. Now, it will be.
So once that happens, what next? Does it make any sense at all to retain paltry individual contribution limits like the federal $2,300 -- or the state's $500 (remember that a constitutional ruling will invalidate state campaign finance regulation on union and corporate expenditures too) -- when unions and corporations will be free to flood the airwaves with all the ads they can buy? Should we just make the whole thing a free-for-all, as long as all expenditures are immediately disclosed?
